Sunday, February 15, 2015

The Ammonite.

This
little Treasure is One of My Favorite Things in the Whole World!...

It's
A beautiful Little

AMMONITE

(This story was told to us the
night before leaving Texas to come home to Minnesota.)

This sweet little
guy is REALLY old (this one is about 280 million yrs); which is
really cool, and really important. So much is often said about the
wisdom that comes with age... And about many things getting better
and more beautiful with age and the passage of time... This sweet
little treasure for sure proves those statements to be true.

As you hold it up
in the light you can see its graceful curve and you can see that its
outer coating has changed over time to be kind of softly iridescent.
It didn't start that way. It was already wonderful. But as it
drifted toward the sea floor dying, it probably could never imagine
that death would have no power to wipe away the truth and the glory
of its existence. That it would forever continue to display God's
amazing artistry. That it would become even more miraculous over the
eons. I'm sure it didn't know that it would become a most amazing
analogy for our lives... And that is one of the main reasons that I
adore ammonites so very much. I love the mathematical curvature, the
iridescence, the textures on the surface and its needs and habits
that are so like ours. Because they are truly that near perfect
analogy.

This little
ammonite is like you Robin and Mikey. Miraculously both separately
and eternally together at the same time. Its so sweet and beautiful
in its expression of God's creative Love. It is a miracle in its
existence. But looking deeper into its needs and its actual
existence during its life, the story unfolds much more... It truly
is so like our souls and our living experience. Life was difficult
and dangerous and fraught with challenges and tests. But one thing
that made the ammonite a special creature is that unlike its
co-mariner the snail, who also were very interesting and nicely
curled; it had the special gift of floatation. While the snails
curved slowly around and around they did it off centered.
And...glued to the bottom of the ocean floor. They had to watch the
Ammonite float around, choosing with free will where it decided it
wanted to be. How high, how deep, which direction it wanted to go,
it went. With one BIG requirement. You see the ammonite coils in
the same plane as it grows and goes through life’s changes. And it
grows one chamber at a time, one after the other after the other
after the other. No shortcuts. No detours. You can't skip one, go
around a few to get past a bad couple of chambers to get to the
really good big roomy chambers in the middle or the end. And the
ammonites life’s anointing and freedom and success is a specialized
little air chamber that runs through and connects every chamber from
birth to death. They are able to control this chamber to allow
themselves to float at different levels and to stay upright. If they
loose control of the ability to keep themselves floating upright they
cannot keep themselves growing in that perfect plane. And if they
are injured or sick or get into a situation they didn't have the
ability to maintain control of to achieve this feat...they will start
to lose their balance, lose control...start to sink to the bottom.
And if not able to correct this and get back into that perfect plane,
they will float to the bottom and die stuck in the mud or be consumed
by a predator. And my personal testimony is that that is sooo like
our existence and our relationship with the Lord. We are born, we
live and grow through one chapter at a time. No matter good or bad,
successful or tragic or nondescript, we must grow through each one,
one at a time. And if we have times where we get wounded, distracted
or just choose to go off in a wrong direction, get lost and find
ourselves getting out of that perfect plane of God's love and
purpose, we start to drift and sink, struggle and die inside until or
if we get back into that perfect plane with the Lord.

And so as it
looks sweet, wonderful, beautiful the most wonderful thing of all
is......what's locked inside. It turns out that this singley whole
precious creature that is so representative of the sweet beauty of
“Robin and Mikey” now has two perfect halves. And then it
reveals its sweetest miracle.

When you open it up and each hold
half, there inside is the record of your journey. Two journeys that
are melted into one and now recorded in time as one single journey
that led to a miracle of Gods amazing Love... The picture of the
journey of “Mikey and Robin”...